Integridad Moral: Concepto

Moral Integrity: Concept

• Article 15 of the Constitution explicitly proclaims the right to moral integrity.
• It protects the inviolability of the person, not only against attacks that injure the body or spirit, but also against any intervention in those assets without the consent of the holder.
• Inhuman or degrading treatment that can violate another person's moral integrity.
• Moral integrity is an attribute of the person, as an entity endowed with dignity simply by being so.
• It implies the proscription of any instrumental use of a subject and the imposition on the same of some impairment that does not respond to a constitutionally legitimate and legally foreseen end.
• Moral integrity integrates a space or scope of its own that translates into the right to be treated as a person and not as a thing or as a simple object.
• The judgment of a criminally relevant attack is not an impediment to concurrence and punishment of other crimes when the typical conduct produced injury or damage to life or property.

Offenses Against Moral Integrity (Art. 173.1 CP)

• Article 173.1 of the Penal Code contains in its first paragraph the basic type with a prison sentence of six months to two years.
• It is a very open criminal type, in which all those conducts capable of injuring the legal asset fit, as long as the means used can be considered as "degrading treatment" and the impairment of moral integrity deserves to be considered serious.
• This figure acts to collect all important effects on moral integrity that cannot be subsumed in more serious conduct (such as torture).
• It is composed negatively by subjective elements, such as those constituted by the humiliation or vexation suffered by the victim who is treated instrumentally and devoid of dignity.
• Elements include physical pain and objective elements in references to how the attack occurs.
• Characteristics of the type describe a clear and unequivocal content for the passive subject, the concurrence of physical or psychological suffering, humiliating behavior, and the concept of dignity.
• The open character of the typical description has as a consequence that the casuistry is very diverse, such as forcing a long time to bathe in cold water and cutting hair as punishment.
• Serious cases of bullying in the school environment are sanctioned.
• Actions such as shaving a mustache or scolding with expressions don't qualify.

2022 Reform to Art. 173.1 CP

• Sanctions those who, knowing the whereabouts of a person's corpse, repeatedly conceal such information from family members.

Minor Unfair Vexations

• They are only punishable if the victim is the spouse and related relations or a family member.
• This relationship is not necessary in the case of someone who addresses the victim with expressions, behaviors or propositions etc.
• Both behaviors are punished, if there is a complaint from the injured person or their representative, with permanent location or work for the benefit of the community, provided that they do not constitute a more serious crime such as sexual harassment.

Attack

• The jurisprudence understands that an attack against moral integrity of the victim is a consequence should be dealt with under art. 180.1.2 of code

Labor and Real Estate Harassment

• Art. 173.1 CP contains two additional paragraphs specifically designed to combat the phenomenon of labor and real estate harassment.
• The common purpose that explains both provisions is to extend the scope of the crime against moral integrity to certain cases in which there is no degrading treatment.
• Regarding labor harassment, punishment with the same penalty provided for in the basic modality.
• In the field of any labor or functional relationship and taking advantage of their relationship of superiority, they repeatedly carry out hostile or humiliating acts against another that, without reaching degrading treatment, involves serious harassment against the victim.
• The repetition of hostile or humiliating acts, even when they do not reach the severity of "degrading treatment", can be criminal if a situation is created for the victim that can be described as "harassment".
• This state can be defined as a psychological or hostile harassment that humiliates the person who suffers it and supposes the imposition of a serious offense to dignity.

Requirements

• According to Supreme Court sentence 694/2018 needs a degrading treatment, constitutes a specific modality of attack against moral integrity.
• Its realization is the systematic and prolonged nature over time that determines a climate of hostility and humiliation towards the worker by those who occupy a position of superiority that is abused.
• Generate a state of unease in the victim through psychological harassment that humiliates her, constituting an offense to dignity.
• Isolated that reflect an act of arbitrariness are not subsumable

Legislative

• The legislator has chosen to punish these acts only when there is a relationship of subordination between the victim and the perpetrator, so acts of harassment between equals cannot be subsumed in this precept.
• It is not enough for situations of "tension" to arise for this crime to occur.
• With respect to punishing real estate harassment, the Code provides for the imposition of the same penalty provided for in the basic type on the subject who "repeatedly carries out hostile or humiliating acts that, without reaching degrading treatment, are intended to impede the legitimate enjoyment of the home.

Habitual Violence (Art. 173.2 and 3 CP)

• Gender violence, as well as domestic and family violence, often superimposed on the previous one, were problems that ran socially in a hidden way and only surfaced in their most extreme manifestations, normally in the form of death of the victims.
• The legal response to this type of violence has been gradual and dispersed, generating a multitude of legislative reforms of all kinds.
• The primary instruments in criminal proceedings are the order of protection for the victim (art. 544 and ss. LECrim).
• It integrates a set of civil and criminal precautionary measures- expulsion of the aggressor from the family home or the prohibition of approaching the victim.
• The provisional imprisonment facilitates the preventive imprisonment of the aggressor (articles 503. 1.3. and 544 bis LECrim) and the Courts of Violence against Women.
• Must highlight systematic aggravation of penalties when a criminal act is committed in this context.
• Are a good example of this the aggravating circumstance of commission of the crime "for reasons of gender" from art. 22.4. a CP or art. 148.4. and 5. and 153 CP, in terms of injuries.

Violence - Penalties and Measures

• Penalties and measures oriented towards dissuasion and aggression have been created. Adaptation of its execution to such needs (for example, the penalties provided for in articles 48 and 57.2 of the Criminal Code or the measure of supervised release of Article 106 of the Criminal Code).
• A system reinforced by the imposition of imprisonment in the event of non-compliance referred penalties and measures (art 468.2 CP, crime of breach of sentence or cautionary measure; cfr. Theme 17).

Habitual Violence

• The literal content from Criminal code art 173.2.1 states physical or mental violence is acted out on a partner who has had a similar affectivity. Also applies to descendants, ascendants and siblings or minors with special protection who coexist; will be punished with imprisonment for a term of six months to three years.
• They expose 27 characteristics as an answer to the phenomenon of gender violence, domestic.

Article 173.2 CP

• 173.2 CP does not protect the health, liberty or security of victims The commission implies the sentencing of killings, injuries, and violence cases together.
• Acts of physical or psychological violence. The first can range from a crime of minor injuries or abuse to murder; psychological violence is more difficult.
• Acts include insults, threats, harassment, deprivation of autonomy and similar behaviors that, due to their intrinsic severity and temporal extension, can be equated with physical violence.
• Not always easy to determine if this constitutes a crime: father who, despite living with his daughter, subjected her, from birth, to a total emotional abandonment, ignoring it and detaching himself from her completely, causing psychological sequelae is not a crime, but acts of psychological harassment are.

Responsibility

• The question of the responsibility of those who, without exercising acts of violence, does not prevent them from occurring often arises.
• It rejects the systematic lack of care for an elderly woman, who ends up malnourished and dehydrated.

Number of Aggressions

• Decisive is not the number of proven aggressions but the existence of a state or climate of permanent violence.

173.3 CP - Habituality

• According to art 173.3 CP, to assess habituality "attention will be paid to the number of acts of violence that are verified.

Delito De Tortura (Arts. 174-177 Cp)

• Torture is prohibited in the Constitution (art 15); The Spanish Law defines this crime to be the following: The authority or civil servant to impose a condition or procedure, which on account of its nature and circumtances it supposes a physical or mental suffering; or diminish capacities of decision or knowledge, or that attempts against their moral integrity. Punishment is imprisonment from two to six years in cases where the attack is serious; and from one to three if it is not. Also, should apply total incapacitation: The article 174 differences regarding the intensity of punishment. Attacks against moral integrity committed by authorities that cant be considered torture, will get 2-4 or 6 months to 2 years.

Important Factors

• Can be the authority or civil servant, abusive of their function.
• Needs to have one of three finalities: to get an specific action, information or confession, to punish for their acts or discrimination reasons.
• In article art 176 CP, there is the authority that without directly hurting someone allows others to do it; it counts as commission for omission.
• It is a necessary condition that the torture itself becomes a "long" situation and a determined gravity on suffering.

El Artículo 15 de la Constitución proclama el derecho a la integridad moral, protegiendo la inviolabilidad de la persona contra ataques al cuerpo o espíritu, requiriendo consentimiento para intervenciones. La integridad moral es un atributo esencial de la persona, que implica la prohibición del uso instrumental de un sujeto.